


or how stolen from the dead

by chelicerata



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Getting Together, Halloween, M/M, Pining, Resurrection, Tony Stark's Complete Lack of Impulse Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27036658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelicerata/pseuds/chelicerata
Summary: “My hero,” the Iron Man suit says. “My spider in shining armor. Pete. Hi. You look… older.”
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 28
Kudos: 301
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	or how stolen from the dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intoxicatelou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/gifts).



> Happy Shipoween! This ended up so much longer than I expected - I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Assume this is canon compliant with the exception that Pepper and Tony broke up at some point pre-Endgame (and let’s just ignore that whole FFH identity reveal thing, too). Title is from The Winter’s Tale (though taken out of the original context).

Peter’s at a shitty college Halloween party when it happens.

 _Shitty_ because he barely knows anyone there, and because his metabolism makes him incapable of getting drunk, and because he’s feeling a little lonely and melancholy for no real reason.

 _Shitty_ because he’s not doing anything except leaning against the wall nursing a warm beer, idly reading his texts from MJ ( _peter I told you no one would get your costume, you should have gone with my slutty spider man idea_ ) and scanning the room for his roommate who dragged him here because he needs to ‘get out more’.

(He gets out plenty, it’s just as Spider-Man – but that still counts, right?)

He takes another swig of beer, yawns - and then his phone buzzes, and his world stops.

The screen says _You Know Who_ , followed by a sunglasses emoji and two dollar bill emojis. It is, obviously, Tony Stark’s number.

The problem is that Mr. Stark’s been dead for three and a half years.

A chill shivers up and down his spine.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, hard, tries to take a deep breath, but when he opens them again his phone is still buzzing and the name on the screen hasn’t changed.

He stumbles through the crowd, pushing away a half-assed mummy, a Tinkerbell, and a Sexy Captain America on his way to the front door. By the time he gets outside, the cold October wind hitting him with a shock after the cramped, stifling party, the call’s gone to voicemail. He stands there on the sidewalk, lost, staring down at his phone screen blankly. 

It’s not- it’s not like no one else would be able to access the number. Ms. Potts could. Colonel Rhodes. They could go through Mr. Stark’s things, pull up the number he used-

_And they’re calling you from a dead man’s number? At one a.m. on Halloween night?_

The phone lights up again, same number, and before Peter can lose his nerve he answers the call. He doesn’t say anything, just brings it up to his ear, breathing hard, hand shaking.

“…Pete?” the man on the other end of the line says, dazed.

_No. No, no-_

“Hi. So. I’m outside your building," - _no no nonononono-_ "unless FRIDAY has played a very cruel joke on me and I’m lurking around another college student’s apartment complex instead-”

The phone slips from his suddenly numb fingers, tumbling towards the ground. He stares blankly at the screen as it shatters on the concrete, the collision barely audible through the panicked buzzing filling his head.

The voice on the other end of the line is still talking when he throws himself up into the air, suit forming around him.

It’s not that he doesn’t want Mr. Stark to be alive. It’s that he _can’t_ be. He can’t let himself believe it. If he gets his hopes up, and it turns out to be a trick-

He doesn’t know how he’ll survive it a second time. 

When he lands outside of his apartment building, Iron Spider suit retracting before he even hits the ground, Mr. St- the- the thing that might be Mr. Stark is leaning against the wall outside, wearing the Iron Man suit. The helmet is on, so Peter can’t see who or what is underneath, but the tilt of his head looks- bemused.

There are a group of drunk college students standing around it.

“Whoa, man, nice Iron Man costume. That shit looks real.”

“Thanks,” the suit says, blankly.

“Did you like- did you _make_ that?”

“Hey, guys, come on, my friend’s super wasted right now, I gotta get him inside,” Peter says, and he's proud of himself for the way his voice sounds nearly normal. He shoos away Mr. S- shoos away the Iron Man suit’s admirers (a Dracula, a Jim-from-The-Office, a Pam-from-The-Office and a freezing-looking Sexy Candy Corn). When they’re gone, he looks back at the suit, haloed by the flickering orange streetlights. Close up, it looks identical to the Iron Man suit that Mr. Stark died in – but then, how could Peter know for sure, going off a years-old memory of a handful of minutes?

He doesn’t want to go nearer. He’s, honestly, terrified of what – who – might be inside. Terrified it’s a trap, terrified he’s going crazy – and, maybe most of all, terrified at the seeds of hope growing inside of him.

“My hero,” the Iron Man suit says. “My spider in shining armor. Pete. Hi. You look… older.”

Peter’s mouth feels dry. He’s pretty sure he’s about to throw up. He thinks the voice sounds right, underneath the suit's modulators. But a lot of things had sounded right, had looked right, with Beck. He’s not going to get tricked again.

“What-” his throat closes up.

“So. Hi. About an hour ago I woke up in a field in upstate New York,” it says. The nanites of the helmet melt away and it’s- it’s like a physical blow, like someone reached into his ribcage and dug their nails into his heart until it bled –

Tony Stark. In front of him. Alive and well. A little grayer around the temples than the Tony Stark in his memories, a few more lines around the eyes, but not a scratch on him. Not like the last time they were in front of each other like this, no horrific, blistering burns searing up his right arm, the shoulder, the neck, onto his _face-_

(His eyes dull and blank and unseeing-)

“I have to admit, I thought you’d be a little happier to see me,” the person who may or may not be Tony Stark says, voice uncharacteristically hesitant, and Peter can’t fucking handle it.

“Prove it,” Peter says.

“What?”

“Prove you’re Tony Stark,” Peter chokes out, hands shaking. “Prove this is real. Something only you would know.”

“I,” he says, staring at Peter, blinking hard. He looks a little off balance. _Good, that makes two of us._ “We. Uh, we took that picture. For the internship. To make it look legit. And I kept a copy, afterwards, and I-” 

He pauses and closes his eyes for just a moment, then forces a smile. He keeps talking, but Peter already knows. “Right, how would you even know about that.” He had seen the picture, after - after. Of course he knows. “It’s got to be something you know too, obviously- independent verification. Hmm. There was that time the caffeine pills interacted with your spider DNA and you were stuck to the ceiling for a solid hour-”

Peter slams into Mr. Stark so hard he spares a thought to worry about denting the front of the suit. He wraps his arms around him, clinging, inadequate to encompass the way his chest feels like it’s crumbling in on itself.

The adrenaline he’d been pushing down finally crashes over him in a wave, making him shake with it. Suddenly his throat feels tight, his eyes stinging. He presses his face against Mr. Stark’s neck.

“It was like thirty minutes at most,” he chokes out.

“Yeah, I missed you too, kid,” Mr. Stark mumbles into his hair, reverently, like a prayer.

As Peter fumbles with the keys to his front door, he feels a prickling on the back of his neck, and looks up. Mr. Stark is staring at him with an incredibly strange expression.

“What?” he asks, trying to surreptitiously wipe the lingering tear tracks off his face.

“You’re. Older.”

“You said that already,” Peter says. “I’m in college. Junior year.” He’s already embarrassed at his outburst, at how pathetically revealing it must have been, and his thoughts keep ricocheting back and forth between that and _he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s **here** , he’s alive-_

Mr. Stark’s eyes are jumping around Peter’s face, oddly intense.

“I’m majoring in chemical engineering. Uh, and I picked up a minor in photography,” he rambles, and Mr. Stark makes an interested noise. He’s staring at Peter’s shoulders, now, slightly perplexed look on his face. “Kind of random, but it's fun, it’s a good outlet, you know…”

Standing here making small talk with a dead man is so strange it’s making Peter’s skin crawl. He doesn’t want to talk about his college major, he wants to-

He finally gets the door open, shoving it harder than he needs to. “You’re- why are you here?” he asks abruptly. “I mean. Not that I don’t- I’m so glad you’re here, but – my apartment? Weren’t you right at the Avengers compound- didn’t they want to, to examine you or something-”

“Probably, which is why I haven’t paid them a visit yet,” Mr. Stark says flippantly.

“You haven’t?” Peter asks, startled.

Mr. Stark came here before he came anywhere else. He… really doesn’t know how to unpack that.

Mr. Stark’s lips twist. “What, I can’t want my first night back on Earth to be with someone who would actually be glad I’m back?”

“Everyone will be glad you’re back, sir,” Peter says, closing the door and leaning against it. So glad he’s back they’ll swoop him away back to the Avengers compound, for all the things Tony Stark has to do that are far more important than asking Peter about his college major.

“ _Everyone_ will have no fucking clue what to do with me,” Mr. Stark says. "Now that I've so inconveniently resurrected myself."

He walks into the apartment, hands shoved in his pockets, looking around at the cheap secondhand furniture and the kitschy fake jack-o-lantern and the handle of Fireball Peter’s roommate had left sitting out on the counter. He avoids Peter’s eyes as he says “You know, from my subjective timeline you were still dead a few hours ago.”

Right.

“I mean. Yeah. Same,” Peter says, dumbly – because what other response is there, after everything? - and Mr. Stark laughs a little. He’s whole and breathing and alive, _alive_ , but he looks exhausted, sick and washed out in the dingy fluorescents of the apartment kitchen. He’d deactivated the suit on the way up the stairs, and in his civilian clothes he looks smaller, more acutely real and present.

He’s also, despite it all, still the most attractive man Peter’s ever met. There’s just something about his _presence_ , something Peter had forgotten how to deal with after so many years of not seeing it in person. It knocks him off balance, makes him feel nervous in a way he hasn’t felt around Mr. Stark since – well, since around the time Peter looked him in the eye and turned down his offer of being an Avenger.

“Did you want,” Peter fumbles, “a drink, or…”

It’s awkward. He’s making it awkward. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. Painful, desperate feelings he had thought he’d buried years ago are rushing back to the surface, sharp and overwhelming. They had never truly gone away, not really, but they had settled into something numb and muted, a small hurt he had thought he’d just have to carry with him forever. 

But now - now they’re even worse than they were before.

“I think I just want to go to sleep,” Mr. Stark says, like he’s just realizing it. “You got a bed in this place?”

“I’m sorry this is weird,” Peter says. “I just. I don’t know how to handle-” he waves his hands helplessly at the living, breathing Mr. Stark _sitting on his bed._

“That makes two of us,” Mr. Stark says, wryly. “I didn’t really have any post-death plans beyond, I don’t know, sitting on a cloud playing a harp, wearing a toga?” He drums his fingers against the wall, restless. He looks lost, unmoored.

It’s funny. He remembers Mr. Stark being so much harder to read.

“I can put you up for a few days, but then you’ll have to start paying rent,” Peter says, deadpan. He sits down on the bed next to him and his head swims with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, remembering the last time they had been like this, back in his tiny bedroom in Queens.

Mr. Stark’s even looking around, examining his room the same way – taking in the frisbee balanced on the pile of textbooks, the half-built Lego set on the desk (shit, should Peter have hidden that before letting him in?), the clothes hastily dumped on the floor earlier when Peter had called MJ in a panic, needing something to wear. His eyes trail along the posters sloppily tacked up on the walls.

“ _Bruce?_ You have a poster of _Bruce?_ A guy dies for a few years and gets replaced in your heart, I see how it is.”

“What can I say, you’re not big and green enough,” Peter says with a smile, shifting sideways and pulling his legs up on the bed. “But I mean, we, you know, Thor and I were on this mission together, out in space, and there was this… alien souvenir shop, or something, selling posters of the Hulk - did you know that Dr. Banner used to be an _alien gladiator_? It’s insane. And we thought it would be funny-”

“God, look at you,” Mr. Stark says, finally looking straight at Peter again. “And I’m sure it didn’t cut into your friendly neighborhood Spider-Manning at all, either. You’re incredible.” The low murmur of approval makes his entire body flush. “And you’ve done it all without me. Didn’t need me at all, huh? I would’ve just held you back.”

Despite the words, he doesn’t sound upset. Maybe a little wistful, but mostly - admiring. It hooks onto that thing inside of Peter that still, all these years later, lives for Mr. Stark’s approval. But it also hurts. Like it was somehow okay that he had been dead, that he had _left_ , just because Peter was capable of functioning without him.

“You wouldn’t have, actually,” Peter says, tightly. “Don’t say that. It really, really sucked, having you gone. Just because I didn't need you doesn't mean I didn't _want-_ ”

Peter’s voice cracks as he says it, horrifically revealing. It must be visible on his face, too, because Mr. Stark looks at him and just says _“Peter-”_

Peter flushes and ducks his head. He knew Mr. Stark must have known, about his stupid little crush all those years ago, but he had been tactful enough not to acknowledge it at the time-

“Sorry,” Mr. Stark says, voice gentle. “At age sixteen you weren’t the most subtle. But I had thought that- I had hoped that… I don’t know-”

“Yeah, I get it, it's pathetic. It’s hard to get much more unavailable than _dead_ ,” Peter snaps, skin prickling with embarrassment. “It’s not like I was- I mean. I’ve. Done stuff-” ‘Done stuff.’ God. What a great impression he’s making. “I’ve dated people, I wasn’t- But. I mean. You’re _alive,_ I- look. I’m sorry, but you’re going to need to give me some time to get over this again, okay?”

“It's not pathetic," Mr. Stark says, low. "Nothing about you is pathetic. But you deserve to-" he cuts himself off, and when he starts again his voice is lighter. "Hey, it's fine, a few weeks of dealing with the real deal Tony Stark again will wear the shine right off.”

“That is exactly the opposite of the problem I’m going to have,” Peter mutters. “Come on. The 'real deal' is who I _want_ , not a bunch of- of sappy memorials from people who didn't even know you.”

"Is that a fact," Mr. Stark says, something Peter can't quite place in his voice.

"You know it is."

Mr. Stark doesn’t answer, and after a moment Peter has to look up from where he’s staring at his own hands.

He’s staring at Peter, head tipped to the side, brow furrowed like he’s considering. His eyes are very dark. Peter had forgotten how long his eyelashes are.

“Mr. Stark?”

“I’m about to do something very stupid,” he says, voice hoarse, lips quirking, “but in my defense, I’ve been alive again for ninety whole minutes and have yet to make a bad decision, and I need to salvage my reputation somehow.”

A violent thrill shoots through Peter.

“I think I’m in favor of this very stupid thing,” he says. He’s half disbelieving as Mr. Stark tips forward and traces his cheekbone with his thumb. He’s still half disbelieving up until the very second Mr. Stark kisses him, gentle and tentative, a barely-there press of his lips, and then he’s – not believing at all, really, but he kisses back, desperate, needy, trying to pour every embarrassing moment of longing he’s ever had into it, in case this is the only shot he’ll ever have.

“Don’t get over it again,” Mr. Stark says, when he pulls back, nodding to himself like he’s just confirmed a theory. “Not yet.”

“I. You. _What,”_ Peter says, breathless.

“I have no idea,” Mr. Stark says. “But somehow we’re both alive again, and I’m willing to figure out the rest as we go along.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter says, giddy, and pulls him back in.

Eventually, Peter has to be the one to stop them, physically pushing Mr. Stark back with a hand on his chest.

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” he says, smoothing his own shirt back down.

“Are you kidding? I’ve never felt better,” Mr. Stark says, kissing him again - or trying to, until he’s cut off by a stifled yawn in the middle. “Okay, point taken. Raincheck until tomorrow. And then at some point I’ll have to tell everyone else I’m alive. Let them parade me in front of the cameras. Let Rhodey and Pepper kill me a second time for disappearing on them again,” he says to himself, smiling briefly. 

He starts taking off his jacket as he talks, and Peter’s briefly distracted by his biceps, which are just – incredibly unfair. His brain shuts down a little at the idea that he has a _raincheck_ to _fuck Tony Stark tomorrow._

Except-

“So you’re not going to disappear when Halloween is over? Or like – at the crack of dawn, or something?” Peter blurts out.

Mr. Stark blinks.

“What? Why would I-”

“I don’t know! It just seems like the sort of thing that might happen. Especially since we don’t even know how you’re alive-”

“Halloween miracle?” Mr. Stark offers.

" _That’s not a thing._ ”

“I don’t know, okay. I have no idea. Some magical space rock bullshit. Maybe the Halloween thing is their sense of humor,” Mr. Stark says. He yawns again, so hard his jaw clicks. “We can figure it out tomorrow. I swear by the Great Pumpkin that if I have anything to say about it, I’m not going to disappear on you.”

Despite everything, despite the rational part of his brain saying that Mr. Stark has absolutely no idea what's going on, Peter believes him. Believes him because – it’s Mr. Stark, and even after all this time - how could he not?

“Tomorrow,” Peter says. “I’ll hold you to it.”

He gives in and closes his eyes, tipping his head forward to press his forehead against Mr. Stark’s for a long moment. Grounding him. Trying to convince himself that this is real, that he’s allowed to have it, allowed to be happy about it without it getting snatched out from under him.

He takes a long, shuddering breath.

“Pete. I don’t want to ruin the moment, but I have to ask.”

Peter cracks an eye open.

“Yeah?”

“Is that supposed to be a Halloween costume?” Mr. Stark asks, low and amused.

“Uh.”

Peter pulls back and looks down at his shirt. He is hit by the sudden, vivid realization that he might have just experienced one of the most important moments of his life wearing the lamest costume of all time.

“Yeah, you know, the shirt is orange, and then I drew the pi symbol on it, so it’s supposed to be ‘Pumpkin Pi’, right…”

He trails off as he hears a slight little laugh.

“God, I missed you,” Mr. Stark says, and the low fervency he says it with both makes Peter shiver and soothes some tiny bit of lingering insecurity, some teenage part of him still desperate to impress, that he hadn’t known was still there. “Forgot you needed a costume until ten minutes before the party?”

“Yeah. MJ said I should just take off my shirt, bring an old Spidey mask and go as ‘Slutty Spider-Man’, but I thought the pun was funny. But I ended up just having to explain the joke all night.”

“It’s a terrible pun, I love it,” Mr. Stark reassures him. He starts pressing kisses behind Peter’s ear, down his neck, and Peter’s entire body shivers with it. “Though I have to admit coming back from the dead to meet Slutty Spider-Man might have been even better.” 

His words are slurring with exhaustion, and he slumps down to rest his head against Peter's shoulder.

“I'll save it for next year. I- should I- I can take the couch,” Peter offers, awkward.

Mr. Stark reaches out to trail his fingers along the inside of his wrist, leaving a burning hot impression behind.

“You could,” Mr. Stark says, “or you could stay here,” and Peter has to bite his lips to keep himself from smiling like an idiot.

“Or I could stay here,” he says.


End file.
